How much reading do you have your dyslexic child do per day?

He’s supposed to read 30 mminutes each night as per his school assignment. But if its a day where he’s already spent an hour with the tutor, or has read alot to complete other assignments, then I don’t make him read more. I figure he needs some down time, and unfortunately reading is not a relaxing activity.

We read 2 to 3 pages of a difficult book every night. Then I read to him for about 20 minutes of the same book. When he was first learning to read we read 20 minutes every day but now he can read pretty good but just can’t sustain it.
Our main focus right now is vision therapy which we do twice a day. It is hard to make him read for long periods after his eyes are so exhausted.

I just signed him up for a reading fluency class at the local university. It comes highly recommended. They say it will help him make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. They do phonics and build comprehension and fluency. It takes 45 minutes a day of parent intervention which we are just going to have to do.
It is only for 5 weeks so I think we can do it. I am hoping that with his eyes muscles working combined with this class he will make another leap in reading.

My son is in second grade. He is reading 2 small Open Court booklets to me each day as part of a sticker reward program from his resource teacher. I read a book of his choosing to him. His doing any reading is a big deal. It’s so difficult for him and he works so hard all day at school. At my insistence he has very little homework this year. The first 2 years were horrible battles at home. How do you all successfully work with your kids at home?

I aim for 20 minutes a day. Over the years (yes, this is becoming years) I have also separately done direct instruction. Right now we are doing Great Leaps at home but it is only three three minute drills. I plan to get back to Seeing Stars and Glass Analysis but right now we both need a bit of a rest. Our high stakes standardized exams took a bit out of both of us.

Sometimes we alternative pages, sometimes we don’t—depends on the reading level of the book, and his fatigue. If he has done a lot of reading already with homework or tutoring, I might skip reading altogether, shorten the time, or certainly alternative pages. I also have him following along with books on tape—a couple chapters a day, when I have the book (sometimes I don’t have the book!)

BTW, my son is reading the first Harry Potter book to me now. We alternative pages but yesterday (he was off school) he read a total of 9 pages to me. We still have some skipping problems (and he is using his finger) and he can’t always sound out all the words, but he is so motivated to read it—because it makes him feel like any other kid. I think the fact that we read the book to him already and he has watched the movie too many times to count makes a big difference—he doesn’t have to expend energy on comprehension.

Beth

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As a professional reading tutor, the absolute minimum for progress is 30-40 minutes intensive two times a week — which would average out to about ten minutes a day. But that is the *absolute minimum* — I actively encourage parents to do more, preferably 20 to 30 minutes per day.

I *actively discourage* so-called “silent reading” for the majority of my students. As I’ve stated many times before, it may be silent but it isn’t reading. If a student is making frantic guesses and misreading every second word out loud even with you there to correct him, what do you think he is doing silently? Most of my students do their homework sloppily or all backwards or incompletely, and get all their math problems wrong, because they are not actually reading the questions and directions. I can’t supervise this of course, but I actively encourage parents to have the child read the workbook and homework instructions out loud first.

My son doesn’t read silently really at all. He is stretched by textbook level and certainly doesn’t read for pleasure. He tends to skip words and use context to figure things out. So far I have just not insisted because I am afraid it will just lead to more bad habits.

Any thoughts?

Beth

How does he do all his homework? my 4th grader has subject homework each nite, and math worksheets with written directions and long term projects(like biography to read, etc.)…my LD 6th grader has hours of homework to read himself and do, but we read aloud from his literature book for fluency. They both read for pleasure, esp. Nintendo magazine, Time for Kids, and sometimes books!

I suspect my son doesn’t have as much homework as yours does. I sit with him most of the time or he does it at the kitchen table where I am available. Tonight he assured me he knew how to do his fraction homework. Not. He spent 45 minutes doing it all wrong and I had to sit there with him and go through them all with him anyway.

I also have hired a tutor to work with him a couple hours a week.

He is doing a science experiment now and just finished a bibliography book report presentation. He read every page of the book (125 pages) to me and we wrote it together. He then had to make a puppet (of Orville Wright) and practice his presentation. My husband is walking him through the science presentation.

It is a lot of work but his teacher does not assign textbook reading for home, unlike his third grade teacher so that helps a lot. They read it all together in class. I had got books on tape because I didn’t think I could handle that again this year but he has only used them for pleasure.

Bottom line is he is not really independent on homework except for limited assignments. Part is reading but part is the fact that math doesn’t come easy for him either. I often have to reteach math. He requires considerable repetition (but last year he didn’t get it at all so this is progress!!!)

I am dreading middle school and can’t quite figure out what to do. He is a weak student in a regular class so I fear him drowning. With tons of support from home, he gets B’s now. He is far too advanced for the special education schools here.

Beth

Thanks for all the posts! I had to make sure I’m on track. I keep thinking I should be doing a lot more (like an hour a day of intense reading!!!). But it’s difficult just to get the regular 20-40 minutes in. In addition to reading, we do a lot of reading related exercises which I don’t count as reading.

And then math!!! Yikes! Although my son seemed to have no problems with math (so we never had to do additional math work or practice) he’s beginning to have some difficulties. It began with him being slow with multiplication facts recall (although multiplication itself wasn’t a problem). But when we started long-division he became a little confused and his slow multiplication skills have only added to the difficulty.

Thanks for sharing! At least I don’t have to feel guilty that I’m not pushing for a good one to two hours of solid reading each day.

Beth,
How awesome that your son is reading Harry Potter! The other day my son was complaining about how stupid the stories are in the “easier reading” books I often have him read. I decided to pull out Harry Potter (which we’ve never read together so he’s unfamilar with the book — although he is familiar with the movie, of course). With tremendous struggle, he waded through 3 pages. The next day I asked him if he’d like to read Harry Potter again or read Ozma of Oz (from the Wizard of Oz series). He chose Ozma! Although the vocabulary is still a challenge and the story is interesting, the font size and “words per page” are a little less overwhelming. Generally I read this to him, but I’ve decided to let him start doing some of the reading because he needs an attainable challenge.

I’m worried about middle school too, but even more immediate I’m extremely concerned about 4th grade. My son now has probably the “easiest” teacher in 3rd grade and he’s already struggling and getting stressed about the level of work.

Hi Beth, I just thought I’d let you know that our transition to middle school for Robbie has gone much smoother than I feared. His English, social studies and math classes are co-taught, with not only the general ed teacher and his SPED teacher in the room, but a SPED aide as well. The SPED aide goes to science with his class too. He started the year with 2 academic support periods per 6 day cycle, which was clearly not enough. Then we took him out of health, which brought him up to 4 periods of academic support per cycle. He did great for the first 2 quarters with this level of support, making the honor role both quarters.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons that sort of piggy backed on each other, he took a nose dive after the first of the year. His anxiety level was going way up, he failed 3 tests in 3 subjects in one week, and the Spanish teacher had clearly had it with him. (in our school system, a foreign language is mandatory, and is a fully academic, 40 minutes daily with homework course, and it is taught immersion style with no English used in the classroom a all) We reconvened the team, and took him out of Spanish, much to everyone’s relief.

Now he has a 40 minute academic support period daily, and has been able to go back into health (which we like) and chorus and tech ed. (which he likes) This support period makes all the difference, The SPED teacher and I communicate almost daily. I let her know what parts of the homework he had trouble with, so that she can go over it again. She also helps him keep long term projects (of which there are many, often simultaneous) on track and organized. They prepare for tests during this time, do re-writes of English papers that need improvement, and the SPED aide helps him keep up to date on his science labs. (another difficult task)

His processing and work speed is just too slow to get through all the work needed without this extra time. As it is, he spends between 1-2 hours a night on homework, and that’s not counting reading time. If we were constantly trying to get all the school work caught up too, it would be impossible. But at the same time, he is clearly able to handle the content, because (when he’s not over stressed) he gets As and B’s on most tests.

I hope your experience in middle school is as positive as ours has been, but we are actually getting much MORE support this year than we did last year.

Karen

My 4th grade son is not the reader my older son is, even though the older one really struggles more academically. While they tell me he _is_ on grade level, he doesn’t read at anywhere near the level his brother did at the same age. That means that Harry Potter has been a bit of a sore spot. The older one read the first 2 “Harry Potters” in 2nd grade. He read the 3rd in a 24 hour period in 3rd grade. Can’t remember how long it took him to read the last one, but I remember trading the book back and forth with him, and we kept “leap frogging” each other every day.

The younger one wanted SOOO badly to read Harry Potter, but it really was over his head in terms of reading level. (not comprehension or vocabulary) We have all the HP’s on tape, because we like to listen to them in the car as we drive. Interestingly, after he had heard the tapes a couple of times, he did make it through the first book last summer. (between 3rd & 4th grade) I kind of think it was just to prove that he could, but he DID do it. I’m sure he couldn’t have if he hadn’t heard the tapes first.

Now we’ve started to collect Redwall tapes. That’s another series of books at a very challenging reading level, but great stories. I’m hoping that he’ll eventually try to read those too. Left to his own devices, though, his comfort reading level is still the “Droon” series or “Bunnicula”.

Karen

Beth, same here. my dd also is reading Harry Potter. Recently read for 2 HOURS on a Saturday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it. She loves the books. She doesn’t like to read outloud (I correct her too much) and I KNOW she is missing alot/decoding them incorrectly, but she still loves them.

I feel like any reading is good even if she misses some words. Weird part: reads ONLY in very dim light. I know that visual processing. I’m just pleased she’s “enjoying” reading for the 1st time in her life.

She reads silently and misses a lot of words - good enought for comprehension, though. She HATES reading we me b/c I correct her too much (see above post).

She’s going back for more reading tutoring over the Summer.

My son read the first two chapters of the first book at school and then insisted on reading it at home. He is reading it to me and he can’t handle reading more than two pages at a time. So we alternative pages. We still have the skipping too—we are trying a new technique with our Neuronet therapist. We’ll see if it works. I have corrected every word for two years now and all it has done I think is made him dependent on me rather than himself. He hardly self corrects.

I think being able to read Harry Potter is partly a belonging thing.

Beth

Laura,

My son was at the same place as yours with Harry Potter six months ago and he is a year ahead in school. The vocabulary is pretty advanced for a third grader.

I worried about fourth grade all summer, especially after we stopped the Lindamood tutoring. That meant that all we did really was sensory based therapies—Interactive Metronome and Neuronet. But this is the best year he has had—only year he is close to keeping up, although adding fractions with unlike denomonators this week has thrown him for a loop.

We thought seriously about retaining him in 3rd grade and were talked out of it by the staff. Despite his success this year, I still am not sure we made the right decision. He is young in his behavior and I can’t imagine him moving to middle school in a year.

Beth

Karen,

I’m glad things are going well for Robbie but I am not holding my breath for Nathan. I have already looked into what is available in the public school. There are self contained classes, and resource room for a study hall. Then there is what appears to me to be just a monitoring status. There is no regular special education teacher involvement in classes. I am worried about the size of the school—don’t know exactly but our elementary school is 1500 students and 4 schools feed into it and tracking. They track the students in middle school and Nathan is clearly going to be in the lowest track. That doesn’t bother me but I am worried about behavioral and/or peer issues. I have hired a tutor this year who taught for a short time in the other middle school in town (she had taught elementary school prior to having a baby) and she told me my fears are well founded.

Beth

You have to correct every error…and read aloud daily. Sure she can read for pleasure, too.

Boy, you’re right, that would worry me too. I can’t imagine Robbie surviving middle school without the SPED teacher in the classroom with him. She is the glue that holds the whole thing together.

They SAY they don’t “track” in our school system, but that’s only partially true. Of course they group kids in SPED in only some of the classrooms, so that they can work with the SPED teachers. Unfortunately with a kid like Robbie there are good and bad things about that. While it’s great that he is with the SPED teacher most of the day, most of the SPED kids have language-based LD’s and I suspect that’s part of the reason his English and SS classes are moving so slowly.

He’s going nuts that they’re only working on their second in-class book of the year. They did “Holes” until December, and have been working on “Hatchet” since then. He has been told he can’t read ahead, which drives him crazy. (“sometimes I hide my book under the desk, Mom, so he can’t see that I’m reading ahead” ;-)

The level of math seems to be just about right for him… challenging, but doable. Science is a real stretch, and he’s needed a LOT of support in that class, but since he has gotten the support he’s doing well in that class too.

Do you have a fall-back plan for Nathan? Or are you just crossing you fingers and hoping for the best? When I think how hard we’ve had to work to manage our kids’ educations, I just can’t imagine what it’s like for those of you who have to deal with worse school systems. (or maybe I can, but I don’t want to!!!)

Karen

Karen,

We have applied for him to attend the parochial school my two other children attend. Our thinking is to have him repeat fourth grade there. Right now there isn’t any room so it isn’t much of a fall back plan. But there are only 60 kids per grade (2 classes) and lots of structure. It is a bit more advanced than the public school which is why we thought of having him repeat a grade. Nathan is sort of immature too—seems younger than he is, although he is tall for his age. I figure for a boy that is less of an issue. In sixth grade there are only two teachers plus specials. 7th and 8th have four teachers (same both years). There is a resource room and tutoring available after school. Nathan has attended camp (siblings can attend) there for the last two summers and they know him. They also know he is LD.

His Neuronet therapist also recommended a magnet Montasouri (sp?) program. It too is small and is a school within a school. The major issue (besides whether he’d get in) is that it is about 45 minutes from us. There is transportation available because it is a magnet program (we have a county based system) but the distance concerns me.

I also planning to see if there are any private schools that might work for him. The ones I know of cater to high achieving kids but those may just be the ones I recognize. Of course, we might be into big bucks here which may limit the options.

A woman I play soccer with is a special ed teacher at another school. She told me not to send him to middle school if he isn’t ready—hold him back. She says it otherwise will be the beginning of a downward spiral. Doesn’t speak well of how the public system handles LD children.

It is too bad that the slow pace of the English classes doesn’t allow Robbie to show off his strengths. My 7th grade daughter brought home all her literature books (paper backs) for the year and promptly read them all!!

Beth

Hi Beth, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you that you can get him into the parochial school! Montessori was great for my kids when they were younger, but already in 3rd grade, they were starting to need a different kind of structure than is available in the Montessori classroom. There were too many choices, and too much going on in the Montessori classroom. They both commented that it was “easier” in the more traditional 4th grade transitional classroom “because someone tells me what to do… I don’t have to decide.”

Keeping Nathan back to go into the parochial school is one thing, I’m not sure I’d be willing to do the same to put off the public middle school. I can’t imagine that Robbie would EVER be “ready” for the middle school situation you described in your public school, no matter how many hears he was kept back :-/

As far as age is concerned, we didn’t start either of our guys the year that they COULD have started in K, because our school at that time had a Jan. 1 cut off. (it has now been rolled back to Sept. 1) I thought that ANY 4 1/2 year old was too young for K, and both of mine would have been the youngest in their classes. So now they are among the oldest in their classes, and tall.

The funny thing is that the girls shoot up so much in middle school and high school that there are a number of girls WAY taller than Robbie in 6th grade. By HS, I think our guys will be looked on as a “catch” by all those tall young ladies.

Karen

Your child sounds like mine. I said, “She’s good in Math”, to her evaluator in 1st grade. She said, “Actually, no, she’s LD in Math too”. It was just that the reading was SO bad, the math looked good comparatively (all things relative!)

I understand about the Math. My daughter (4th grade) is struggling more in fractions and still doesn’t do well with time. She said to me the other day, “Boy, Mom, this is so hard, I’m SURE GLAD I’m really good at Math, huh?” I wanted to cry. (I’ve never told her she’s LD in Math, too) I’ve always felt she needs to believe she’s good at something. I’m afraid a “reality check” is in the future, though.

I explained to her that even if your’re “really good” in a subject, like Math, there could be areas of Math that are hard. (Like I was a whiz at memorizing multiplication facts, but forget doing division :-) ).

I think it pacified her for the moment. Boy, this is hard, isn’t it?

Okay, but I guess I’m going to have to tell her that I really want to read the book too - to encourage her to read aloud with me. We usually do I read 1 page, you read 1 page when reading aloud.

Currently, she can miss 20% or so of the words and still get all the comprehension. My concern is how long is that going to hold out as we get in MS?

Karen,

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Montessori. Given what you say, I’m not sure it would be a good choice for Nathan. I will have to look into it more.

As far as holding Nathan back, we almost did it last year. He just couldn’t keep up with the cir. But the IEP team talked us out of it. The fourth grade lead teacher (now his teacher) assured us she could teach him to write (and she was right—she then taught his resource teacher) and he scored 85% on a post test for third grade math—it didn’t have fractions on it!! He actually has done amazingly well this year—the first A’s of his life and the rest B’s. But it is always a struggle. Now I don’t know if repeating a year will end that struggle—he will always be LD. But he ended first grade without reading and we have played catch up ever since (and we asked about holding him back in first grade too—the answer was no because he was classified). We are working on visualization in therapy now and it is really helping but we’re always behind what the demands of school are.

The difference between Nathan and Robbie is that Robbie more pronounced strengths and weaknesses. I think it doesn’t make sense to hold a child like him back. Nathan doesn’t have any academic strengths. In many ways, he presents like a kid with a low average IQ who will always need more repetition. His various processing issues affect him globally. We have come a long way in reducing them (he is now in the normal curve compared to K-2 where he was not) but we’re always playing catchup.

Nathan is in the middle of the age range for his class with a March birthday and a September 1 deadline. My daughter is by far the youngest. She started school at 4 1/2 (with December 1 deadline) and then we moved to FL where you had to be five by September 1. Some kids in her class are a full year older than her. She gets straight A’s so that isn’t an issue but I think socially she’d be much better off if she was with 6th instead of 7th. I notice she is a leader with kids in 6th but pretty much minds her own business (with her one good friend) in 7th. Her experience makes me think you are better off being older than younger, even if the academics are not an issue.

Beth

We’re struggling with fractions too. Last night he had a total fit about it all because they are now subtracting fraction with different denominators and he still doesn’t have addition down. Sigh. I have a reading specialist I hired as a tutor for the FCATs (work on comprehension) and she used to teach fifth grade. I called her last night. She is going to work with him today. I can’t seem to teach him.

Time has been an issue for us too, although he finally got it after I went way back using Singapore math series. His teacher couldn’t do it even one on one and wrote me a note asking me to try. I think the problem is the textbook puts too many things together too fast for our kids.

I am going to order Marilyn Burns book on fractions today. I clearly don’t know how to teach him and don’t have any materials to help. I think we’re going to be dealing with fractions for a long time!!! It was recommended highly to me by people on the math board.

Beth

You are a SAINT if you can teach your son! I haven’t even tried to teach time, guess I keep hoping she’ll get it through osmosis.

Maybe this Summer….

Try the Landmark School(look on Yellow Pages on this site) for their arithmetic workbook; I used it with my now 6th grade son and it has great reproducable worksheets. Math is so sequential that you can’t move on unless you automatically know your math facts, then you can concentrate on new things. The Key Math test might give you more info. about “where” your child is in terms of math and what level to do next.

I certainly agree with you completely that I’d rather have my kids among the oldest in the class than the youngest. I shudder at the thought of the magnitude of the problems if my kids were a year younger in their respective grades. But in our case, we started them late, so there has never been any stigma attacherd to it. I think you have to weigh the potential emotional draw-backs against the possible academic advantage. The “right” answer, as I’m sure you know, is going to be different for every kids and every family.

If you end up switching Nathan to a different school, that could be a good time to do it, if you decide it’s a good idea. There won’t be any social stigma, because the other kids won’t even know about it.

Karen

Karen,

He is opposed to it and we have not discussed it much, since it is not a possibility right now. So I don’t know the depth of his opposition. His best friend’s parents had him repeat third grade and he knows several other kids who have also. It doesn’t seem that uncommon here. I think it would help him academically but if he is devastated, it would be a wash. And some days I think my goal should be to get him out of high school as soon as possible—and on to a nonacademic life!!

Beth

Leah,
I think you’re doing the right thing in letting your daughter feel she’s good at math…because I’m sure she IS good at some types of math and half of all this is believing in yourself.

Sometimes I think about the movie Forrest Gump and how the character’s mother teaches him to believe he’s basically no different than anyone else. Maybe just believing in oneself does make a difference.

By the way, you’d be surprised by how many non-LD kids have difficulty with time! I remember helping some kids with it when my daughter was in 4th grade.

I printed the information - Maybe I will try it. She “gets” those time tables, but forgets them very easily. She gets them for the test, but doesn’t seem to retain them at all. I think it’s the sequential

When she was little - preschool, or so, I would try to teach her her numbers, say 1 - 10. I would name them in order and she would say, “Well, Mom, that’s how YOUR numbers go, but my numbers are 1, 3 9, 2 1 4, 7, 8”. (How do you argue with that?)

Her tutor told me she was trying to tell me she had a problem with sequencing, i.e., how HER brain worked and I didn’t get it. Having no knowledge of dyslexia or LDs, I thought this is one strange kid! :-0.

I am going to be so ON my grandchildren!

Thanks for letting me know about the non-LD kiddos who have trouble with time. I think I have tunnel vision and everytime there’s a problem I chalk it up to the LD.

She believes in herself all right - sometimes too much. Perserverance and self esteem one of her biggest strengths. Came “out of the womb” with an attitude!

I’m afraid MS will take its toll on those areas.

Well, if she reads willingly, it isn’t *all* wrong!

Seriously, my experience is that she is going to have a real struggle in middle school if she doesn’t up the accuracy ASAP. Elementary school teachers tend to ask undemanding questions and accept vague responses. Middle school teachers generally expect a lot more depth. And science and social studies demand accuracy. Do work with her as much as you can. And when she gets the “mean” teacher who is marking everything wrong, explain to her as nicely as possible that this is exactly what you were talking about, and yes, she does have to learn to do things the teacher’s way.

A math study — possibly the TIMSS but I’m not positive — found a huge difference in attitude between kids in American schools and kids in other countries. American kids ascribed success or failure in math to forces beyond their control, either you are “good at meth” or “bad at math”, most kids being “bad” and that’s a life sentence, so they expect nothing of themseloves. Kids in other countries ascribed their success to hard work — so they were willing to work to improve. It is to be noted that although US elementary scores are getting slightly better, around the average in developed countries, by Grade 12 most kids accept themselves as failures and the US is near the bottom of the barrel in math scores (on an American test, BTW, so that excuse doen’t wash, and compared to general ed kids as well as elite, so that excuse doesn’t wash either.)

Second point: I’m a math major, honours BSc and almost at the master’s before my thyroid shut down; and I also have to work very very hard at some aspects of math, thank you very much. As in *every* field of life, some things are hard and some are easy, and some people are skilled in one area and not in others. I happen to be very good at visualization and at structure so I pass the abstract algebra part with flying colours, and I’m terrible at lengthy memorization and I have a real fight with the part of the math program called analysis. That’s life.

As far as teaching your kids, it’s a definitely productive for them to think that they’re good at math. OK, maybe not fast at filling in test questions, but good at understanding. You don’t want them to give up and shut down. Then when something is hard, well, that means you have to work at it.

I get answers like this a lot from a lot of students. Young ones usually do it with a cutesy grin; older ones with a really sneaky smirk.

This kind of re-shaping the world answer is a coping skill that many many kids develop. They don’t follow what everybody else is doing, so they make up something of their own. It’s *normal* for two and three-year-olds to do this, as they try to form a picture of the world with limited information. In most cases, the real world intervenes in the form of corrections from teachers, classmates, older siblings, playmates, etc., and they start to follow the conventional patterns more and more.

However in some cases they get rewarded by people who think it’s “cute” or worse yet “creative” (I disagree — truly creative people do something relly new, not just the old stuff backwards) and that’s where the sly look comes in, when the kid knows he’s conning you.

I find a large part of my job as a tutor is being the profesional meanie (to use the politest term available) and to say tough luck, this is the way the world works and you’re going to have to lump it. I have to teach kids to read and write from left to right and from top to bottom, to spell according to the common standard, to do math whether they feel like it or not, to add fractions according to the rules, not to use “quick tricks” that are not quick when they don’t work, to show their work in algebra, to write answers in full sentences, to check their work, to give complete and full answers, and on and on. As time goes on I’ve become the world’s classic nit-picker. But you know, the kids I’ve nitpicked at for six months are suddenly getting B’s instead of F’s …

Thanks, Victoria. You always make good, logical sense.

Maybe I will go ahead and call the reading tutor to start now instead of waiting to school end. I was going to just do the 9 weeks of Summer for her (3 x wkly) b/c she still goes to SI OT.

She also is LD in Math, and I KNOW that’s going to start being a problem soon. I believe, b/c she’s gifted, she has been able to handle elementary school. I think the MS is going to be a whole new ball game for her and she’s going to be devastated when those good grades drop. I am trying to prepare her, as gently as possible, for that reality.

She also wants to attend gifted classes in MS. I am apprehensive about that avenue (it would be all gifted, all day, every day, wherein currently she is in a 1 day a week pullout program) That’s going to be another reality check for her. Yet at the same time, I DON’T want to weaken her confidence in her abilities - any advice on how to handle that dilemma? I have been telling her that she may not want to continue in gifted at MS if it’s too hard - that she can tell the other students “I want a life, too”. (trying to help her find an out where she doesn’t have to admit she can’t cut it)

Currently, she comes home with headaches several times a week (yes, we’ve changed glasses 2x in 6 mos) and I think it’s stress from working so hard.

She loves the gifted classroom, loves to learn, but recently they started the dreaded “research paper” and the teacher recently told me she “modified” Jami’s outline for the paper. The teacher, prior to this, had said how WELL Jami was doing. When she told me about the modification, I replied, “Now, you’re seeing the weaknesses”, wherein she agreed. She said “this is written, everything up to now has been oral”.

I am already planning to have a transition meeting between the MS and elementary school next year to “iron out” any problems prior to the beginning of the school year. She’s the one who will need to be taken around the school several times b4 school starts to “get her bearings” and will need the combination lock over the Summer to practice getting it open. She’ll have 5 minutes to get to class, and has NO concept of time. Those are the things I am seeing that are going to cause big problems (outside the academics) next year.

Can I talk with the teachers about her time problems, and expect them to “cut her some slack” on getting to class on time for say, the 1st 4-9 wks.? Would that be inappropriate?

Again, you always have good common sense about these matters. I WANT her accommodated in the areas where she really needs it, but - at the same time, a BOSS isn’t going to let her be late every day. She is developmentally delayed approximately 2 years.

Input would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I didn’t think it was “cute”, I was just to dumb to know what was REALLY going on!

How would you like to come to Sunny Florida for a year b4 my child hits MS? You ARE the kind of tutor I want. See my recent post to you re: “yikes I’m doing it all wrong”

She now has her numbers okay. She can’t sing, or keep a beat, or do hand signals with songs, can’t remember the words to nursery rhymes (still - I’ve given up - she tells me I can sing lullabies to her babies). If there’s something she doesn’t know how to do, she calls it “stupid & boring”. (Which, after ALL these years, I’ve finally figure out that = (I can’t do it and I don’t want anyone to know).

She told all the girls in the neighborhood that “riding bikes is a BOY thing - girls don’t ride bikes” for years (b/c she couldn’t ride until she was 8-1/2 Her OT said it was basically a “miracle” that she learned to ride. Says it’s still a “safety issue” and she doesn’t need to be doing it.

Where’s the fine line between accom and not. Do you think AT is a bad thing for a child who can’t spell or won’t EVER write fast enough to take notes and can’t copy from the board?

Again, you make a lot of sense. Just want your continued input.

Agree completely. I was a “bad in math” kid. Went to college (only for a short time) and spent all the time necessary in the “learning lab”. Had a profession who said, “I WILL get you through this class if you stay” (when I was ready to drop it out of pure FEAR). Yes, I worked my butt off. I made an 89.7 at the end of the class and he bumped me to an “A” b/c 1) I had worked so hard; or 2) He felt sorry for me! BUT he was the only person who could teach me how to do a word problem (used some kind of algeabraic formula, if I remember correctly)

I still hate math. I won’t even attempt to help my daughter with fractions. We laugh together and say I’m good in reading, spelling, English and she’s good in Math and Science.

I just don’t want that confidence she has to waiver. I’m afraid it’s going to.

My son’s Reg. Ed. English teacher is the opposite of a nit-picker. He lets SO laid back taht IMO, he lets too much slide. I’m really concerned that the kids in his class are not going to be prepared for the written work load in 7th grade. My son does much more written work in science than in English.

At his last team meeting, I brought some of his English papers, which are given back marked up with MANY corrections, and then a mark of “B+” or whatever. He has gotten an A and a B+ on his report cards so far, and I’m expecting the same on the next one based on his supplementary. I pointed out that I don’t think he’s going to learn from these corrections if he isn’t expected to MAKE the corrections. I asked if they could have him go back and fix these mistakes.

The English teachers response was, “Well, he can fix them if he wants to, but I’m not changing his grade!”

I wasn’t even hinting that they should change his grade, and I told the teacher that. I said I couldn’t care less what his grade was, (I didn’t say that I thought the grading was VERY liberal) I wanted him to LEARN. Fortunately both the SPED teacher and the SPED director broke in simultaneously and said that NO kid WANTS to go back and fix work they’ve already completed.

Fortunately, the SPED teacher picked up the ball, and said that if the English teacher gave the papers to her, rather than directly to Robbie, she would work with him on getting the corrections done in Academic Support. Some of these corrections are easy to fix, (spelling, punctuation, etc.) others need more guidance and “teaching”. Some of this teacher’s favorite comments are “weak closing sentence” or needs “Needs more description, try to visualize better.” (to an NLD kid) I think those are things he DOES need more work on, but he needs to be TAUGHT how to do it. It won’t happen in a vacuum.

I work with him on that sort of thing at home, but as I think I mentioned, this teacher gives very little in the way of out-of-school writing assignments. If the general ed teacher is not going to work on it IN school, then he needs to alert the SPED teacher that he wants her to handle this piece. Telling this kid that he needs to “visualize better” is only slightly more useful than making the same comment to a blind student.

Karen

May I suggest big, dumb, workbooks? They have their uses for this sort of thing. I like the Keys to Math series which is available from lots of homeschooling outfits. (I like all of the Keys to Math series with the exception of Geometry, which really sucked, and which I haven’t therefore used.) Each of the 4 workbooks in the Key to Fractions series has about 500 problems in it, and each page in each workbook has no more than a single new concept. I made my kid go through them all at the rate of 500 problems a day (intensity is important in retraining the brain.) At that time, we also did all of the Keys to Decimals (4 workbooks), Keys to Percents and Ratios (3 workbooks), Keys to English Measurement (3 workbooks) and Key to Metric Measurement (3 workbooks) in a sort of mathematical frenzy which took about 3 weeks. Fractions, decimals, percents, rates and time quit being issues after all that. HOWEVER, I wouldn’t teach fractions until she is really solid on her addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, because in order to handle fractions, you need to be able to look at related numbers like 12/48 and say 1/4 without thinking about it. If she doesn’t know her math facts, I found that a combination of Calculadders (timed, sequential math drills), computer drill programs, and Math Wrap-Ups (math drill with physical component) worked well for us.

BTW, mine also had a sequencing disorder. I found gymnastics, karate, and Interactive Metronome all to be helpful in retiring it. It wasn’t until after Interactive Metronome that she was able to handle problems involving time at all, but it wasn’t until after Key to English Measurement that she could handle complex word problems involving combinations of money, time, rate, and distance, in which you have one train leaving a city in one time zone, and another leaving a city in a second time zone, and you need to get to a different place entirely in the quickest, cheapest, possible fashion.

Thank you! Thank you! I have a sixth grade ld son. We have not been reading with him every night. My husband and I were having parenting struggles. We have begun reading 15 to 30 everyday.

I have found on the webiste www.renlearning.com you can find reading levels of books. You can click on order quizzes, them it will ask what country, then you type in the title or author. It will give you an synopsis, the grade level, and point value. The point value means nothing unless your school uses Accelerated Reader and have the tests. The elementary I work in uses this program.

By using this I was able to look through scholastic, troll, etc., book orders and find books with higher comprehension level to deter boredom and lower reading levels. If this helps one other person it was worth sharing.